I really like Ocaml, but the error handling is very bad, some libraries use Option/Result, some use exceptions, the inconsistency makes it a little hard to work with. I much prefer Rust in this regard.
I feel like we're going though an evolution of the web, and no matter what we do, it's going to happen.
The web is going to change (for better or worse) or die, and there's nothing we can do about it.
The web killed printed media to a large degree and AI will do the same, Resistance is futile!
But those "alternatives app stores" can never do the things Play Store can, like automatic installing/updating apps without user needing to click "Install" for each one. (which gets quite annoying)
Google could've made it possible but did not, that's monopoly.
I don't like Brave Browser at all with its integrated crypto ads, but I've been using Brave Search for a couple of days and it seems nice, much better than DDG:
It still doesn't have half of Kate's (Plasma's default editor) functionalities.
The only addition seems to be the dark mode, which is very opinionated and unchangeable
I don't know about Ubuntu but on Opensuse, Nvidia Optimus (Nvidia + integrated intel) works fine after installing the official Nvidia drivers and setting suse-prime to the desired mode.